This blog provides stories that Denyse O'Leary, a Toronto-based journalist, has found to be of interest, as she covers the growing intelligent design controversy. It supports her book By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004). Does the universe - and do life forms - show evidence of intelligent design? If so, Carl Sagan was wrong and so is Richard Dawkins. Now what?

Enter your search termsSubmit search form

Custom Search

Monday, April 27, 2009

Podcasts in the intelligent design controversy, and other good stuff free

Click here to listen.On this episode of ID the Future, Logan Paul Gage reviews Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion, the first book-length critique of Richard Dawkins' infamous The God Delusion. Listen in as Gage explains where McGrath succeeds in writing "with a scholarly care and graciousness," but fails to address Darwinism, assuming instead that theism is compatible with Darwin's theory.

[I usually begin any response to claims that Darwinism is compatible with theism by pointing out that it didn't work for Darwin. He became less and less of a theist throughout his life and ended up pleading that he perhaps "deserve[d] to be called a theist." Hmmm. Whatever happened to "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty .... " (the opening statement of the historic Christian creed - which does not sould like an invitation to doubt and waver, and wonder if there might be another way, or think that one deserves to be called anything - other than a sinner saved by grace)]

2. Evidence for Intelligent Design

What do you do when your professor challenges you to come up with facts in support of intelligent design (ID)? A group of students went to the source and asked CSC’s Casey Luskin, who answered them at Evolution News & Views and Intelligent Design the Future:

The Rise of the New Spontaneous GenerationistsSpontaneous Generation — the idea that new life could form from nonliving matter — was popular 300 years ago, and now it’s experiencing a resurgence. As Robert Deyes at The ID Report explains:

"One explanation for the origin of life is that the first living cell, or cells, developed from nonliving matter according to chemical laws that we can observe today. This explanation is called the theory of chemical evolution or prebiotic (before biological life) evolution. The 'chemical evolution' theory assumes that matter and energy somehow self-originated into complex forms without any outside intelligence directing the process. We call this process of self-organization without outside intelligence spontaneous generation. In most forms, the theory assumes that a very long time was needed to "test" millions of chemical combinations until the right combination for life was found" (Ref 8, p.41).

To summarize, organic matter is seen as "the stuff of which life is spontaneously generated by nature" (Ref 8, p.71). In effect evolutionists have today replaced 17th century incantations of life-generating garbage mounds with wild suppositions of how life might have originated naturally in the silts of our earth. As perhaps the most outspoken of the new crop of Spontaneous Generationists, zoologist Richard Dawkins had this to say on the matter:

"Before the coming of life on earth, some rudimentary evolution of molecules could have occurred by ordinary processes of physics and chemistry. There is no need to think of design or purpose or directedness. If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way. The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition" (Ref 9, p.13)

Dawkins has yet to clarify the factual details of a purely naturalistic prebiotic evolution.

[Isn't this just the modern version of magic? You can't get information out of sludge without organization. Organization requires intelligent direction. Why is that such a hard thing to accept?]

4. Slouching Toward Columbine: Darwin's Tree of Death

Over at Beliefnet, David Klinghoffer has a provocative essay commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. Klinghoffer notes that Columbine killer Eric Harris was inspired in part by his fanatical devotion to Darwinian natural selection, a trait Harris unfortunately shared with many opponents of human dignity during the past century. Given the pervasive influence of Social Darwinism in our culture, Klinghoffer suggests that Darwin's Tree of Life might be more appropriately viewed as a Tree of Death:

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution with its Tree of Life is applauded by most sophisticated Americans and Europeans as a scientific idea pure and simple, without the aura of dread and terror that, properly, should surround it in our minds.

Why should we so regard it? Not necessarily because of any judgment about whether the idea is right or wrong as science, but rather because of the uncanny way evolution has had of supplying the rationale and creating the backdrop for the most twisted, monstrous social movements that have sprung up in Western culture in the past century and half.

Chairman Targeted in Retaliation for Promoting Critical Thinking on Evolution

When elected officials take a stand for academic freedom, they become targets for the Darwin lobby. Because of his leadership and support for critical thinking on evolution, Texas State Board of Education Chair Don McLeroy has been targeted by Darwin's defenders in the Texas Senate who want to remove him from his position. Less than a month ago, the Texas Board adopted landmark science standards that will protect teachers who want to let students evaluate and critique the evidence for Darwinian evolution. Now Darwinists are trying to convince the state Senate to block McLeroy's reappointment as Board Chair. "Supporting those, like Don McLeroy, who take a stand for academic freedom to question evolution at personal cost is one of the most important and effective things citizens can do," said CSC Associate Director John West. "It sends a message to elected officials that expelling leaders like Dr. McLeroy because of their stance on Darwin's theory is simply not acceptable." Here's one thing you can do to help:E-mail the chairman of the Senate Nominating Committee, Mike Jackson, at MIKE.JACKSON@SENATE.STATE.TX.US and tell him you support Dr. McLeroy as Chair of the State Board of Education. Be sure to e-mail the other committee members as well at these addresses: KEVIN.ELTIFE@SENATE.STATE.TX.US, GLENN.HEGAR@SENATE.STATE.TX.US, JANE.NELSON@SENATE.STATE.TX.US, ROBERT.NICHOLS@SENATE.STATE.TX.US,, ELIOT.SHAPLEIGH@SENATE.STATE.TX.US, KIRK.WATSON@SENATE.STATE.TX.US .

(The evil Discos offer a sample letter, but I assume that if you are smart enough to be writing to a public official, you know how to behave yourself in print. They keep copies. - Denyse)